People combine goods and time in household production, and theory suggests that as their wage rates rise, they will substitute goods-intensive for time-intensive activities. However, it is not clear how activities that take essentially no, or minimal, amounts of spending, such as sleeping or watching TV, fit into the theory. This column uses data from time diaries for the US, France, and Germany to demonstrate that not all non-work time is the same, and different components of non-work time respond differently to changing incentives.

Economic wellbeing depends on the consumption of not just goods and services, but also the consumption of time. This column looks at leisure and consumption together for the same families by imputing the amount of leisure families consume in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and finds a negative relationship between consumption and leisure. Accounting for both leisure and consumption implies somewhat less inequality in society, and suggests that social welfare policies and the business cycle can alter the economic wellbeing of families by both altering resources consumed and through their effect on leisure.